Verizon locks their phones?

* usenet-illiterate top post reformatted as a convenience to readers

In article <[email protected]>,
"Jim Dubya" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> "james g. keegan jr." <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > In article <[email protected]>,
> > "Jim Dubya" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Sprint always works great for me in the Chicago area. He must have had a
> >> bad
> >> phone or maybe he is just a putz.
> >> One of the Chicago TV stations did independent testing last year and
> >> found
> >> sprint to be the best in the Chicago area.
> >
> > i was one of sprints first customers in the 518 area code. i dropped
> > sprint some years ago and switched to verizon when i lived in chicago
> > and none of the 8 or 9 sprint phones they gave me for free would work
> > in my chicago apartment. presidential towers, 47th floor. i could see
> > the sprint sign from my window, but not make or receive a call.
> > verizon was significantly better in all areas of chicago, including
> > airports.

> Not true no more! Sprint has significantly improved service in the Chicago
> area. They are now better than Verizon, but I don't expect anyone on this
> newsgroup to admit it because it is full-of Verizon Shills that have been
> brainwashed with the "It's the Network BS" of the Verizon Marketing Machine.


do you think your wailing that has more substance then the personal
experiences of people who have had a chance to see what the facts are?

--
get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.

---

› See More: Verizon locks their phones?

"james g. keegan jr." <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>* usenet-illiterate top post reformatted as a convenience to readers
>
> In article <[email protected]>,
> "Jim Dubya" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> "james g. keegan jr." <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>> > In article <[email protected]>,
>> > "Jim Dubya" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Sprint always works great for me in the Chicago area. He must have had
>> >> a
>> >> bad
>> >> phone or maybe he is just a putz.
>> >> One of the Chicago TV stations did independent testing last year and
>> >> found
>> >> sprint to be the best in the Chicago area.
>> >
>> > i was one of sprints first customers in the 518 area code. i dropped
>> > sprint some years ago and switched to verizon when i lived in chicago
>> > and none of the 8 or 9 sprint phones they gave me for free would work
>> > in my chicago apartment. presidential towers, 47th floor. i could see
>> > the sprint sign from my window, but not make or receive a call.
>> > verizon was significantly better in all areas of chicago, including
>> > airports.
>
>> Not true no more! Sprint has significantly improved service in the
>> Chicago
>> area. They are now better than Verizon, but I don't expect anyone on this
>> newsgroup to admit it because it is full-of Verizon Shills that have been
>> brainwashed with the "It's the Network BS" of the Verizon Marketing
>> Machine.
>
>
> do you think your wailing that has more substance then the personal
> experiences of people who have had a chance to see what the facts are?

Yes I do. There are many putzes here that are brain-washed by the Verizon
Marketing Machine that are almost in a hypnotic trance regarding the
"Verizon, It's the Network" crap. They are drinking the koolaid by the
gallons. If they were to do some reserach. they would find that Sprint can
be forced into roaming mode and therefore can roam on Verizon, in the very
unlikely circumstance that you have a Verizon signal but not a sprint
signal. If the folks on the Verizon newsgroup would stop drinking the
kool-aid that Verizon is serving them, they would see the truth!

I do have to admit that Verizon as a marketing department that is actually
quite amazing, but in reality, that is all that they have. Take it from me
because I had been with Verizon for 10 years and had been brain-washed by
them. I went around like you guy do bashing Sprint at every opportunity and
then I moved to an area where there is no Verizon service and was forced to
switch to Sprint. It has been three years and I have never looked-back! I
travel nationally quite frequently and the folks that I travel with are
always borrowing my Sprint phone because they don't have usable signal on
their Verizon phones. Listen up all of you Verizon Shills and put down your
glass of Verizon Kool-aid because I speak the truth and you will learn by
listening to me! If you have any questions, then fire-away and I will give
you the truth from an unbiased point-of-view. Remember that I was with
Verizon for 10 years and was trained to be a "Sprint Basher" just like most
of the shills in this newsgroup.

P.S. Next time you don't get a signal on Verizon and have to borrow a Sprint
phone, don't forget to say to yourself "It's the Network!" :-) Doh!




>
> --
> get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.

In article <[email protected]>,
"Jim Dubya" <[email protected]> wrote:

> "james g. keegan jr." <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...

> > do you think your wailing that has more substance then the personal
> > experiences of people who have had a chance to see what the facts are?
>
> Yes I do.

obstinately ignorant is far, far worse then simply ignorant you know.

[...]

--
get real. like jesus would ever own a gun or vote republican.

"Drumstick" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> And I say my experience is exactly 180 degrees the opposite of yours.
> Sprint wasn't even available where I ma so I got Cingular and couldn't
> make/receive a call outside my city limits. Went to Altell, better but
> no joy and they kept my bill screwed up. Verizon works every day
> everywhere I go and man I'm usually in the sticks let me tell you!
>
>

..
>
> Drum--

I'm not trying to stir this argument but just where do Verizon phones NOT
work? I'm a satisfied Verizon customer for the last 3 years & have yet to
find a location without signal. I suppose I haven't traveled to those areas
yet but from NJ to Florida they seem to have it covered.

"Drumstick" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> If the folks on the Verizon newsgroup would stop drinking the
>> kool-aid that Verizon is serving them, they would see the truth!
>
> And I say my experience is exactly 180 degrees the opposite of yours.
>...Verizon works every day
> everywhere I go and man I'm usually in the sticks let me tell you!
>
>... I don't care what you
> think of my story any more than I care about your story, different area
> different coverage. See we can all make it personal, how hard is that?!
>
> Point is, no one cell company is always better so give that part of it a
> rest ok? I don't care what's written on the d*mn phone or the bill as
> long as the phone works at a price I can live with paying. With or
> without cameras, MP3 players, web browsers, fancy pictures and
> videos...all that is gravy if the d*mn phone works! My Verizon phone
> never lets me down and where I'm at it's MY phone they're borrowing.
>
Amen to this post, the one that's made the most sense so far in the entire
thread!

In article <[email protected]>,
"Jim Dubya" <[email protected]> wrote:


> I do have to admit that Verizon as a marketing department that is actually
> quite amazing, but in reality, that is all that they have. Take it from me
> because I had been with Verizon for 10 years and had been brain-washed by
> them....

Since VZW has existed for only seven years, how could you have been with
them for ten years?

What else are you fabricating?



--Mike

Boomer wrote:
> I'm not trying to stir this argument but just where do Verizon phones NOT
> work? I'm a satisfied Verizon customer for the last 3 years & have yet to
> find a location without signal. I suppose I haven't traveled to those areas
> yet but from NJ to Florida they seem to have it covered.

I've been told there are large areas in Wisconsin where there's no coverage.

--
"You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals only eat
their enemies." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson

In article <[email protected]>,
Pegleg <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:08:39 -0700, Michael Wise <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >Since VZW has existed for only seven years, how could you have been with
> >them for ten years?
>
> Guess you are 'technically" correct but some of us have been with
> PacBell which then became Airtouch which then became Verizon, etc. as
> the swallowing-up of regional carriers evolved. Maybe that is along the
> lines he was thinking.


Flawed as well as incorrect line of thinking. Pac Bell Wireless became
SBC wireless and then rebranded wireless services to Cingular. SBC
bought ATTWS, but kept the AT&T name for wireless.


Today's VZW is made up mainly of the former GTE Wireless (where I was a
customer), Bell Atlantic Mobile, Vodaphone, AirTouch Cellular, and a
host of small players. No part of the former Pac Bell Wireless is a
part of today's VZW (to my knowledge).

Sure, it's very likely that the thread curmudgeon was a customer of one
of one of the companies now part of VZW, but that company was not VZW.



--Mike

At 17 Aug 2007 10:08:39 -0700 Michael Wise wrote:

> Since VZW has existed for only seven years, how could you have been
with
> them for ten years?

Verizon didn't get created out of the aeither- I assume he's counting
their predecessors in his tenure. T-Mobile thanks me for being with
them since "October 2000" everytime I call CS, despite the fact the
first two or three years t eycalled themselves "Voicestream." My ten-
year tenure (1993 through 2003) with Cingular included six years or
so when they were "Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems."



--

"I don't need my cell phone to play video games or take pictures
or double as a Walkie-Talkie; I just need it to work. Thanks for
all the bells and whistles, but I could communicate better with
ACTUAL bells and whistles." -Bill Maher 9/25/2003

At 17 Aug 2007 12:38:45 -0700 Michael Wise wrote:

> Flawed as well as incorrect line of thinking. Pac Bell Wireless
> became
> SBC wireless and then rebranded wireless services to Cingular. SBC
> bought ATTWS, but kept the AT&T name for wireless.


Actually, Cingular (a independant company owned by SBC and BellSouth)
bought AT&T Wireless, which at that point in time was an independent
company spun off from AT&T (the long distance company left over by
the Ma Bell breakup,) months before, and lost the right to use the
AT&T name, which required spending millions on new signage and untold
gallons of orange paint rebranding hundreds of AT&T stores as
Cingular stores.

Then SBC bought AT&T (the long distance company,) and started
renaming themselves AT&T, and of course getting the right to use the
AT&T name for wireless, but BellSouth wasn't interested in putting
another company's name on their half of Cingular, until...

....AT&T (SBC) merged with BellSouth and became one happy
dysfunctional company, and started spending untold millions
rebranding the Cingular stores as AT&T stores... ;-)


> No part of the former Pac Bell Wireless is a
> part of today's VZW (to my knowledge).

I believe you're right. However, how did PacTel get stuck at 1900-
MHz? Generally the incumbent landline Telco got the 800-Mhz "B"
(which originally stood for "B"ell, as in Ma Bell!) license unless
they were shortsighted enoughbto sell it to someone else in case this
whole cellphone thing turned out to be a fad! ;-)
(US West, now Qwest, sold most of their original licenses so here in
Denver, Verizon is the B carrier, and AT&T is the "A" or "A"lternate
carrier.

> Sure, it's very likely that the thread curmudgeon was a customer of
> one
> of one of the companies now part of VZW, but that company was not
> VZW.


Or perhaps he assumes the original "B" carrier there, who must have
bought the license from PacTel originally, was somehow affiliated
with them, since PacTel effectively sold themselves out of the
cellphone biz until the 1900MHz PCS-band auctions years later allowed
them back in. (As it did Qwest in Colorado and a large part of the
midwest.)

(You've got to love the government- they broke The Phone Company into
a dozen regional companies to protect consumers from "monopoly" and
then let all of them merge back into two or three to benefit
consumers by the "economies of scale!")

--

"I don't need my cell phone to play video games or take pictures
or double as a Walkie-Talkie; I just need it to work. Thanks for
all the bells and whistles, but I could communicate better with
ACTUAL bells and whistles." -Bill Maher 9/25/2003

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.cellular.sprintpcs.]
On 2007-08-17, Michael Wise <[email protected]> wrote:

>> Guess you are 'technically" correct but some of us have been with
>> PacBell which then became Airtouch which then became Verizon, etc. as
>> the swallowing-up of regional carriers evolved. Maybe that is along the
>> lines he was thinking.
>
>
> Flawed as well as incorrect line of thinking. Pac Bell Wireless became
> SBC wireless and then rebranded wireless services to Cingular. SBC
> bought ATTWS, but kept the AT&T name for wireless.

SBC bought all of AT&T, actually.

> Today's VZW is made up mainly of the former GTE Wireless (where I was a
> customer), Bell Atlantic Mobile, Vodaphone, AirTouch Cellular, and a
> host of small players. No part of the former Pac Bell Wireless is a
> part of today's VZW (to my knowledge).

I thought part of PacBell Wireless spun off and became AirTouch. But I'm
not 100% sure.

--
Steve Sobol, Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED
"Drench yourself in words unspoken / Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins / The rest is still unwritten"
- Natasha Beddingfield

In article <[email protected]>,
Steve Sobol <[email protected]> wrote:


> >> Guess you are 'technically" correct but some of us have been with
> >> PacBell which then became Airtouch which then became Verizon, etc. as
> >> the swallowing-up of regional carriers evolved. Maybe that is along the
> >> lines he was thinking.
> >
> >
> > Flawed as well as incorrect line of thinking. Pac Bell Wireless became
> > SBC wireless and then rebranded wireless services to Cingular. SBC
> > bought ATTWS, but kept the AT&T name for wireless.
>
> SBC bought all of AT&T, actually.

I'm aware of that, but for purposes related to this thread; I mentioned
only the relevant cellular aspect.

>
> > Today's VZW is made up mainly of the former GTE Wireless (where I was a
> > customer), Bell Atlantic Mobile, Vodaphone, AirTouch Cellular, and a
> > host of small players. No part of the former Pac Bell Wireless is a
> > part of today's VZW (to my knowledge).
>
> I thought part of PacBell Wireless spun off and became AirTouch. But I'm
> not 100% sure.


That certainly wasn't the case in NorCal.



--Mike

In article <[email protected]>,
Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:

> At 17 Aug 2007 12:38:45 -0700 Michael Wise wrote:
>
> > Flawed as well as incorrect line of thinking. Pac Bell Wireless
> > became
> > SBC wireless and then rebranded wireless services to Cingular. SBC
> > bought ATTWS, but kept the AT&T name for wireless.
>
>
> Actually, Cingular (a independant company owned by SBC and BellSouth)
> bought AT&T Wireless,...


Are you sure about that? My recollection from that time frame is that
Cingular was merely a rebranded name for the cellular service which SBC
implemented shortly after the SBC/Bell South merger. They may have been
considered independent (much in the same way VZW is technically
independent from Verizon...but in reality it was the same company with
the same board members.


> which at that point in time was an independent
> company spun off from AT&T (the long distance company left over by
> the Ma Bell breakup,) months before, and lost the right to use the
> AT&T name, which required spending millions on new signage and untold
> gallons of orange paint rebranding hundreds of AT&T stores as
> Cingular stores.

> Then SBC bought AT&T (the long distance company,) and started
> renaming themselves AT&T, and of course getting the right to use the
> AT&T name for wireless, but BellSouth wasn't interested in putting
> another company's name on their half of Cingular, until...
>
> ...AT&T (SBC) merged with BellSouth and became one happy
> dysfunctional company, and started spending untold millions
> rebranding the Cingular stores as AT&T stores... ;-)


ATTWS existed long before SBC bought AT&T. I know, because from about
1994-1999 (or perhaps 1998) I and the company (Wired Magazine) I managed
IT and landline/wireless service for used the A-side carrier Cellular
One (SF Bay Area market). AT&T incorporated C1 and rebranded as ATTWS.
During that time, I also had accounts with Pac Bell Wireless, Nextel,
and GTE Wireless (Wired wanting me to stay on top of who had the best
coverage).

I'm aware of the logistical hassles incurred after the by all the sign
changes, but the company was known as Cingular before it became ATTWS.




> > No part of the former Pac Bell Wireless is a
> > part of today's VZW (to my knowledge).
>
> I believe you're right. However, how did PacTel get stuck at 1900-
> MHz?


Because, at least in the SF Bay Area, C1 (which ATTWS later acquired)
was already using the 800 MHz TDMA and GTE Wireless was using the 800
MHz CDMA freqs.


> Generally the incumbent landline Telco got the 800-Mhz "B"
> (which originally stood for "B"ell, as in Ma Bell!) license unless
> they were shortsighted enoughbto sell it to someone else in case this
> whole cellphone thing turned out to be a fad! ;-)
> (US West, now Qwest, sold most of their original licenses so here in
> Denver, Verizon is the B carrier, and AT&T is the "A" or "A"lternate
> carrier.
>
> > Sure, it's very likely that the thread curmudgeon was a customer of
> > one
> > of one of the companies now part of VZW, but that company was not
> > VZW.
>
>
> Or perhaps he assumes the original "B" carrier there, who must have
> bought the license from PacTel originally, was somehow affiliated
> with them, since PacTel effectively sold themselves out of the
> cellphone biz until the 1900MHz PCS-band auctions years later allowed
> them back in. (As it did Qwest in Colorado and a large part of the
> midwest.)

I don't know of anytime when Pac Bell offered any sort of cellular in
the Chicagoland (where our thread curmudgeon suggests he lives).
>
> (You've got to love the government- they broke The Phone Company into
> a dozen regional companies to protect consumers from "monopoly" and
> then let all of them merge back into two or three to benefit
> consumers by the "economies of scale!")


Isn't America great?! ; )



--Mike

In article <[email protected]>,
Todd Allcock <[email protected]> wrote:

> At 17 Aug 2007 10:08:39 -0700 Michael Wise wrote:
>
> > Since VZW has existed for only seven years, how could you have been
> with
> > them for ten years?
>
> Verizon didn't get created out of the aeither- I assume he's counting
> their predecessors in his tenure.


Perhaps, but Pac Bell cellular was not a predecessor to VZW.



--Mike

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.cellular.sprintpcs.]
On 2007-08-17, Michael Wise <[email protected]> wrote:

>> (You've got to love the government- they broke The Phone Company into
>> a dozen regional companies to protect consumers from "monopoly" and
>> then let all of them merge back into two or three to benefit
>> consumers by the "economies of scale!")
>
> Isn't America great?! ; )

Feh. That's why I get my landline telephone and Internet access from the
cable company, and my wireless phone service from a company that doesn't
do US landlines. US telcos suck ass; they're monolithic monsters that
employ large numbers of obnoxious bureaucratic jerkoffs.

--
Steve Sobol, Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED
"Drench yourself in words unspoken / Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins / The rest is still unwritten"
- Natasha Beddingfield